Windows 10 Vs Mac OS X El Capitan

The latest operating systems by market leaders Microsoft Corporation and Apple Inc. are gearing up for the launch this year. Let’s see how Windows 10 and Mac OS X El Capitan operating systems stand against each other.

Current Status

Developer Preview of Windows 10 is already available through Windows Insider program allowing many users to use Windows 10 on their desktops and Windows Phones. Whereas El Capitan was just announced this month in WWDC-2015.

Release Date

Windows 10 is arriving sooner than El Capitan. It is getting released on 29th July, 2015 while the release date of El Capitan is not exactly known. It is announced to be available this fall.

New Features

Windows 10 would ship with Microsoft’s new browser; Edge; which is expected to perform well after all the criticism Internet Explorer has faced. Cortana continues to improve and deliver excellent performance. The Start menu would be seen in its new avatar.

El Capitan is bringing new performance enhancements to existing OS Yosemite. Improved Mission control and language support would definitely help El Capitan to expand its user base.

Hardware Compatibility

As Apple owns hardware for its devices, El Capitan would be compatible to recent Apple devices. Similarly, if a device is already running Windows 8.1, it’s good to go. However, Windows has various hardware manufacturers for its desktops and mobile devices. Availability of the OS features would be limited by hardware support.

Software Applications

While all the existing applications would run on Windows 10, Microsoft has brought forward the concept of Universal apps – apps which are developed once and can be deployed on any Windows devices of any form factor. This would definitely increase reach of Windows apps. Microsoft has also added support for Objective C to its Visual Studio IDE.

When it comes to software on Mac, there is no dearth of applications. Even the Microsoft Office suite is available for Mac. However, Mac cannot beat the availability of games on Windows. Although Apple has extended support for Metal, Microsoft has always been ahead in this area.

Price

Windows 10 is available as a free upgrade for existing users of Windows 7 and later. This is offer is valid for the first year after the launch. Currently Microsoft does not have any confirm say about the pricing model after this first year or the cost for a novice user.

As per the model of OS X, if one already owns a relatively recent Mac, he would get El Capitan upgrade for free.

Security

Windows has always been target for the malware developers. The same threat is likely to continue for Windows 10 as well though it is proclaimed to be the most secure version of Windows till date. As opposed to this, Mac OS is secure because of its UNIX based architecture and has very less number of malware.